


A Cloud of Crimson

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [33]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Codependency, Gen, Semi-Logical Extreme, Sibling Love, Telepathy, at least toeing the line in how you can read it, maxicest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 11:45:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5742610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An idea I had, based on ponderings about how powerful Wanda could potentially be, given that she [SPOILERS] tore Ultron's processor out of his <i>vibranium</i> body for what was done to Pietro. Very much AU and theoretical and slightly OP for Wanda's powers.</p><p>As a note, the Maxicest tags are there because it can be read that way. I did not mean it that way and I do not ship it, but this really toes the line and, as ever, I leave interpretation up to you readers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cloud of Crimson

_“So you can stay here if you want and I'll send your brother to come get you, but if you step out that door, you're an Avenger.”_

Wanda paused at Barton’s words, her breath slowed. Scarlet eyes met his. “Tell Pietro to find me,” she said, and darted through the building, scarlet following behind her, trailing from her fingertips. She tugged at her bond to her brother, the link of scarlet light between her mind and his and pointed him to Barton. The rock was not yet too far off the ground, she was certain.

She reached the gaping cliff to nothingness and threw herself off, scarlet wrapping around her in a binding shield. She rolled when she hit the ground, and pushed herself up. It was mere moments before she spotted her brother’s blue dropping from falling rock to falling rock to safe soil then through the woods to her.

His voice was soft. “Wanda.”

Her hand reached for his, instinctively, fingers intertwined with fingers, locking them into safety. Wanda’s eyes remained fixed on the rock. “Do you remember, during training.” She paused, tasted the words before she spoke them. “When you ran onto the shooting range, when I was in the tower.”

She felt the flash of scarlet memory amongst the rich blue and silver chill of her brother’s mind. “Yes. I remember.”

“Do you remember the assault courses?”

Pietro nodded. Wanda’s gaze shifted, from the rising rock to her brother’s face. “Do you trust me?”

Pietro relaxed. “With my whole life.”

The next question was not, really, even a question. “Do you love me?”

Pietro’s hand lifted her knuckles to his lips. Wanda’s free hand touched her brow, fingertips moving towards her brother’s. “Show me.”

Scarlet filled her mind, and burgundy, and maroon and magenta, cerise and soft pinks and golds, and copper as bright as the sun. It poured down a connection not quite strong enough for words, but strong enough for this, bright and burning and warm as fire from the deep well that lay beneath the spreading tree of Pietro’s mind.

 _Love_ it sang. _Warmth, affection, trust, knowing, mine, yours, safety, aid, love, warmth, affection trust knowing mine yours safetyaidlovewarmthaffectiontrust-_

Meaning after meaning, memory after memory cascaded through, filling the cathedral of Wanda’s mind, rubbing away the dark façade to show the synagogue beneath. Pietro’s eyes were half closed, Pietro’s body still in a way he only was with Wanda, perfect total peace, complete utter calm. Around them Wanda’s scarlet grew, a maelstrom of magic, as rich as blood, as strong as wine, as fine as silk.

A voice crackled over comms. “Wanda? What’s going on down there?”

It was a surprising effort for Wanda to lift her hand and touch the earpiece. Her mind was filled with it, was still filling with it, all the love and care her brother held for her, strengthening her resolve, giving her purpose, and the physical world felt less real than the mental.

“Tell them to jump,” she said, voice barely a whisper. “Tell them to jump and my scarlet will catch them.”

“Wanda,” the voice said, and Wanda thought it was the Captain. “Wanda, are you strong enough to do that?”

Wanda felt herself smile, felt a sliver of her own scarlet rise from the floodwaters sent from her brother’s mind and gifted it back to Pietro.

“My brother is here. My city is under threat. I am strong enough to do _anything_.”

There was silence down the comms, and Wanda’s still rising scarlet began to sense the minds on the rising rock. They glowed in a myriad of colours, bright and dark, shadows and illumination, every colour imaginable and every shape. Wanda threaded her scarlet through as many as she could and spoke in as many languages she could recall, and images where she could not.

 _Jump. Jump into the scarlet._ There was the touch of an order to it, just as when she had told everyone to leave, to get out. That had not worked. This had to. _Run to the edge as fast as you can and jump._ The next words were no order. The next words were a promise. _I will catch you_ , she sent. _I will shield you from the bullets and blasts and the buildings and I will catch you_.

The minds on the rock began to move, and Wanda spread her scarlet still wider to catch them. The minds glowed on the rock, shining out to her. Her scarlet she could feel, finding its way up still, and wrapping around the rock. She couldn’t feel all of Ultron’s secondary bodies, but she could feel the bullets whisking through the air, the pulses of energy, as fast as – faster sometimes – her brother. They she could catch, or tangle up in threads of scarlet as fine and strong as spiders silk.

As the first leapt Pietro went to his knees.

She sent a query to his mind, worry and wellness and a question. The flood from his mind, scarlet and crimson, indigo and azure, silver and gold and copper and grey, all their colours mingled, was unabated. She sent, as best she could, his name, the shape and concept of _Pietro?_

His hand in hers clasped tighter, a physical assurance where words might not make it. Wanda understood the meaning. _You can do this_.

 

* * *

 

Pietro watched as Wanda pushed her scarlet out, more and more and more, as much as there was love flooding to her from his mind. He was deep beneath the tree of his mind, trapped amongst the taproots, floating above the void of emptiness, pulling from the one thing which anchored his mind more than anything. He cared for Wanda more than anything else, more than his own self, and the well of love, the blood of his tree, might as well be unending. He raised them from his mind with all his strength and gifted more and more to Wanda.

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s mind filled further, scarlet and blue swirling around her. _Love_ it sang, and sang still louder. _Warmth, affection, trust, knowing, mine, yours, safety, aid, love, warmth, affection trust knowing mine yours safetyaidlovewarmthaffectiontrustknowingmineyourssafetyaid-_ on and on and on until there was no trace of the cathedral façade she had so long hidden behind. Faith had shaped her, even if she did not believe any longer, and faith made her certain _this_ , her rising scarlet, reaching to catch those falling from her city, was the right thing to do.

 

* * *

 

Pietro did not know how much longer he could do this. Wanda needed more, still more and he would give it, _could_ give it, but the blue and the scarlet was filling his mind too, ripping leaves from his tree, breaking branches, and tearing memories into their swirling waters.

He gripped Wanda’s hand tighter.

 

* * *

 

Wanda could feel her brother’s mind straining, and stretched a tendril of scarlet out, towards the mind cored with golden-orange, and shelled around with maroon and green.

 _Vision?_ She thought, and sent the concept spiralling outwards towards the mind of ordered neurons. Elsewhere her scarlet was dropping people slowly to the ground, tugging them away from crater’s edge, but that was a certainty born of instinct. The scope was stretching still farther and she needed more scope than she did scarlet. Her brother could give her scarlet. He pulled it still from the deep well within his mind, his blue, her scarlet, all his affection for her, all his loyalty, and _still_ unending. She needed scope. _Vision,_ she sent again, his face, the name the godling had given him and then _need_ and an image of the stone on his brow, shining gold against his magenta.

She felt Vision’s arms tear through a secondary, intangible and tangible as necessary, and wove deeper into his mind. She tried to make words, tried to send a message packed into a single spiral of scarlet. _I need the stone to stop the city._ She felt the vibration of larynx and jaw as Vision spoke, but could not make out the words, and then he was dropping like a stone, plummeting, and barely seemed to catch himself before he landed beside them. Wanda almost swayed between the two minds she could feel, the Vision’s ordered neurons and her brother’s maelstrom of blue and scarlet rising up in even deeper affection, every language they knew, every concept swirling faster, _love, warmth, affection trust knowing mine yours safetyaidlovewarmthaffectiontrustknowing-_ and swirling still through the scarlet and deep blue flooding into Wanda’s mind, painting the walls in her colours and his. In his own mind branches were breaking free of his tree, and Wanda caught all she could that came through to her, and sent delicate threads back to try to tie in place all she could of her brother’s mind.

“Wanda?” the Vision asked, and it felt like her eyelids were made of lead as she opened her eyes. There was something in his face, Wanda thought, even through the scarlet wrapping and writhing around them warping what she could see, that said he could see her mind and her brother’s and the way her scarlet was stretching beyond her scope. “What can I do to help?” he asked.

Wanda gestured him closer. “The stone,” she said, “It is of the mind, yes? It is what gave us our powers?” The Vision nodded slowly. “I need its power,” she said. “Pietro can give me more scarlet, but he cannot give me scope. Only the Stone can make it greater.”

“I cannot remove it,” the Vision said and Wanda nodded.

“May I touch it?”

The Vision bowed his head slightly, and the fingertips of Wanda’s free hand grazed lightly over the golden stone.

Around them her scarlet sparked greater. Beside her Pietro, almost falling over, straightened, though he was still kneeling. The Vision’s eyes shut, Wanda noticed, and she closed her own.

“I cannot hold the city,” she said, and hoped her earpiece was still working with her scarlet so bright around them. “But I can get the people down, and stop some of the robots. Will you be able to stop the city?”

It was Stark, hated Stark, whose voice crackled over comms. “Not stop,” he said, and Wanda cannot find it in herself to be surprised. “We can vaporise it all. Stop it from killing anyone down below. Anyone up here though, boom, vaporised.”

Wanda twisted her fingers, made her scarlet rise up like reaching, grasping hands. She could see, just about, through the eyes of some of the people in the city still, see the cloud of crimson stretching towards them, not all the way around the city – that was too wide for her reach, even with her brother’s love and the Vision’s stone – but wide enough, and stretching snaking swirls in trawling nets outwards. “Get them to me,” Wanda said. “I can catch them.”

She could hear Stark, the Captain, the Widow and the archer all relaying it, to those people her scarlet had not already told, and braced her scarlet to catch them.

 

* * *

 

Pietro’s mind was spinning with the rising waves that filled it. His tree was holding; he could see the fine and glowing thread Wanda had woven about it, holding it in place, and branches lost he could feel held safe above the tides in Wanda’s mind, ready to be returned. He was beneath the taproots now, far down the well, and was drawing from things beyond the protective love he had for Wanda, drawing from his love for Sokovia, for Novi Grad, for their parents now dead, and the cat that had followed them to the Home and from there to the streets. It was almost all blue now, a deep shade that turned a rich purple where Wanda’s scarlet was mingled in.

Any other time Pietro might have wondered why Wanda’s scarlet was so distinct in his mind, even here where she had never gone, but now, like this, he knew without question why it was: he knew her better than he knew himself, as she knew him better than he knew himself. Red was her colour and blue was his. As long as they were halves of the same their colours would touch each other’s minds. They were twins, and halves of a whole.

Pietro found the blue and the scarlet and the deep dark purple and pulled it up with all his strength.

 

* * *

 

Wanda had lost count of the number of people she had caught by the time they are done, but the Vision had not, his mind keeping a constant calm tally as Wanda’s scarlet brought each person safely down. By the time Hulk crashed down under his own steam, the Widow on his back, and the Captain and the archer had been carefully set down by Wanda’s scarlet, the city was a vague shape above them. At some point during it all Wanda had felt another shape come hovering up beside the city, another form join the dance of Thor and Stark through the robots, and this one touched down beside them with a dog held securely to its chest.

Far above the city imploded.

Wanda sent the information to Pietro, a soft assurance, and removed her fingers from Vision’s brow with a soft scarlet tendril of warmly given thanks. She reeled, however, and only Pietro’s speed caught her before she fell.

 

* * *

 

The week Wanda spent unconscious was, unquestionably, the worst time of Pietro’s life. It had been two days of terror when they were ten, and their time at HYDRA, while unpleasant, had been met with daily assurances of Wanda’s health and infrequent visits. This was a week, with Wanda still and pale in a hospital bed. This was listening to machines beep around her, before being pulled off for one debriefing after another and questions after questions from medics and doctors and scientists and agents and Pietro did _not have time for it_.

All he truly wanted was to sit with Wanda, to wait for her to wake. She was, the Vision assured them all, quite alright, only strained, but Pietro did not trust anyone’s estimation of his sister bar his own, and for all he hated it, there was a kind of calm in watching the heart monitor or the EEG drawing out lines and offering soft noise. That Wanda’s hand was warm, and would occasionally twitch against his own was simply further comfort.

Clint, at least, seemed to understand that, if he was not there for Wanda’s waking then things could go badly from either end. Pietro, throwing a fit for not having been allowed to be there, or Wanda, not knowing where her brother was.

Pietro was there when Wanda woke, albeit sleeping. His hand wrapped around hers and Wanda simply shifted her grip as she tried to push herself up. There was no tube down her throat – S.H.I.E.L.D. medical was too advanced for that – but there was a cannula under her nostrils and a needle in her arm. Her mind went back to the castle, to the connection they’d left in her hand after her powers had manifested, trying to drip-feed her sedatives to make sure she didn’t tear their minds apart with her nightmares. It had healed, without a scar, in a matter of minutes from a transfusion of Pietro’s blood, but Wanda still knew the spot. Her brother’s thumb was resting on it.

“Pietro?” she asked, croaking.

Her brother’s eyes flickered open. “Wanda?”

Wanda managed a smile, stroked her thumb over his hand, sent scarlet dancing out from her fingertips. “I’m alright,” she promised. “Just tired.”

Pietro was up in a moment, lips pressed lightly to her brow. “Rest,” he murmured. “I will still be here.”

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated!


End file.
